Boat anchors have been developed over the years for stabilizing or bracing boats or other buoyant devices when positioned in the water. An anchor can generally be described as a large or heavy device which embeds into the floor of a sea, lake, river, or other body of water to brace a boat or other buoyant device. Conventional anchors have hooks, flukes, or barbs which embed into or snag underwater terrain to accomplish the bracing function. Advance have been made over the years in the structural design of anchors to make them easier to handle or transport, which enables the anchor to readily reach the waterway floor or other underwater terrain, and which increases the anchoring force when launching, positioning, or setting an anchor. Some examples of these advances can be seen in U.S. Pat. No. 4,972,793 by Sakai titled "Anchor, " U.S. Pat. No. 4,397,257 by Colin titled "Sea Anchor In Particular For Large Ships," and British Published Patent Document No. 1,067,382 by Wright titled "Improvements In Or Relating To Anchors."
Floors or the underwater terrain of these waterways, however, also often contain many natural as well as man-made obstacles, such as rocks, shrubbery, trees, sea plants, natural caverns, wreckage, or pollutants, with which anchors can become entangled. Generally, when a user of an anchor incurs difficulty in removing or dislodging an anchor from the underwater terrain by merely winching the anchor, the boat is guided in a reverse direction and the anchor is attempted to be removed when the boat is above or now behind the anchor in the opposite direction it was originally attempting to travel. If the anchor has portions thereof, e.g., a hook, fluke, or barb, lodged under a large rock, log, or some type of man-made obstacle, this conventional anchor removal process is often unsatisfactory. In other words, the anchor remains lodged under the obstacle or a user has problems in removing the anchor.
One cause of these anchor removal problems, for example, is that the hook, fluke, or barb can actually be further lodged under the obstacle when the upper shank of an anchor is pulled in the opposite direction. Accordingly, attempts have been made to develop anchors which can more easily be removed when lodged under obstacles. Examples of some of these attempts can be seen in U.S. Pat. No. 4,951,593 by Brown et al. titled "Anchor With Snag Release Mechanics," U.S. Pat. No. 4,385,584 by Simpson, III titled "Boat Anchor," U.S. Pat. No. 4,644,894 by Woodgate titled "Anchor," and French Published Patent Document No. 1,466,433 by Garnier. These conventional "snag-release" anchors, however, are often complex which, for example, can increase the risk of entanglements, expensive to manufacture, and fail to be easily used on some of the various underwater terrain which an anchor can encounter.